Post date: Nov 07, 2008 7:51:32 PM
Nov 6, 2008 12:06 PM posted by Randall Rauwendaal [updated Nov 7, 2008 11:51 AM] So, after upgrading my Mac's harddrive I had an extra 160GB laptop harddrive lying around, coincidentally it was about this time that all my PSN downloads finally filled up the 40GB harddrive that came with my ps3. Naturally, I decided to use the old Mac harddrive to upgrade the ps3's drive. I knew it was possible but looking at all the guides, they seemed to rely on copying save games, and reloading them later, and requiring re-downloading of most content. What!?! I won't stand for it, not when I know how easy it is to clone a harddrive in Linux.
It is at this point that I would like to note Sony's sad omission of an eSATA port on the ps3. This could have potentially made this process much easier, and enable lots of external harddrive upgrade options, I certainly think it would have made more sense to add eSATA than that ridiculous assortment of ports on the first ps3's.
Anyway, after yanking out the ps3's harddrive I hooked them both up to my elisa media center Linux box. One command later, I had perfectly cloned my ps3's harddrive.
dd if=/dev/sde of=/dev/sdf
But know for the tricky part, the new 160GB harddrive now has an MBR that says its a 40GB, I can use it as is and it works perfectly, but I haven't gained anything at this point. Unfortunately I had been working on the assumption that the ps3 used a Linux filesystem (seems sensible considering all the Linux support), and that I would be able to update the drives size using standard partitioning tools. However, for some reason, Sony went with a weird Fat32 variant which might even be encrypted (not sure on that). Anyway, end result is that this just got a lot more complicated.
But, we're not licked yet.